The chaos at Lake Washington Institute of Technology is by no means an isolated occurrence.
by Jesse Singal
Reason.com
Elisa Parrett, a newly tenured 38-year-old professor of English at Lake Washington Institute of Technology, the only public technical institute in Washington state, realized last June that she had some qualms about the approach her university—which is located in suburban Seattle and has about 6,000 students—had taken to diversity and inclusion.
Her concerns about the campus climate had been mounting for a while. “I wasn’t exactly open about my political positions at work, but I didn’t exactly keep them a secret either,” says Parrett, whose heterodox politics led her to vote for Green Party nominee Jill Stein in 2016 and for Donald Trump last year. “I simply avoided bringing politics up and avoided mentioning my views unless they seemed relevant to things other people had already said.” She didn’t like the rise of the concept of “safe spaces,” or certain aspects of what she calls “capital-A anti-racist pedagogy,” which she views as being distinct from mere opposition to racism.